The family of a D-Day hero told last night how they had to hire a private nurse to care for him as he lay dying in an NHS hospital.

Veteran Albert Buck had driven a tank all the way from Normandy to help liberate the concentration camp at Belsen in 1945.

Yet when he died he had lost half his body weight and looked more like the victims of the Holocaust he had once rescued.

His son Michael said: “He was transformed from a sprightly, 13-stone 84-year-old to a five-stone skeleton.

“We had to hire our own nurse just to make sure he had food and water.”

Albert, a former tugboat driver, lived with wife May, who suffers from dementia, in Dartford, Kent. They were married for 62 years.

In April 2009 he fell out of his mobility scooter and ­fractured a hip, and was ­taken to Darent ­Valley ­Hospital in Kent.

The doctor said Albert should have no ­problem ­getting back on his feet. But after two weeks it became apparent that he wasn’t eating or drinking.

Then blood tests showed he had high levels of calcium in his blood, a common problem when the body is trying to repair a broken bone. Michael said: “Too much calcium can make ­people aggressive and confused, so dad became a bit of a problem patient.

“He would pull the sheet up over his head. The nurses didn’t try to coax him out. We would turn up to visit and he’d be ­lying in a urine-soaked bed, his meals taken away ­untouched.

“They tried to hydrate him with a drip but because he was so confused he would just pull it out.”

Nurses had not been ­giving ­Albert his medication ­because he refused to come out from ­under his sheet.

Michael said: “About six weeks after the operation we decided we had to get him out of there. We ­sorted out a nursing home, but he fainted and had to go back to hospital.”

Because he had been ­discharged and ­readmitted, Albert was treated as a new patient and tests began again.

Michael said: “There was no ­geriatric ward. His food and drinks were left out of reach and he wet the bed.”

So the family hired a former care home nurse. Michael said: “She made a massive difference. He was well enough to be discharged and he went to a nursing home, but he had a relapse and had to go back to hospital. When he went back our hearts sank – we knew he’d never come out.

“He died a few days later, a skeleton. What dad needed was to be on a geriatric ward where nurses are specifically trained to help the elderly. He needed to be cared for, not ignored.”

A spokesman for Darent ­Valley Hospital said they had not received a formal complaint from the family but would investigate.

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